Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of the Kalka River/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 03:05, 13 July 2008.

Battle of the Kalka River

 * Nominator(s): Kyriakos (talk)

I'm nominating this article for featured article because I think that it is FA standard. I've worked on this article for last few months and I think I have brought it to FA standard. The article has passed a GAC and a WP:MILHIST A-class review. Kyriakos (talk) 10:23, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Comments
 * Please be consistent with your bibliographical entries in the printed sources section, most are first name last name, but one is last name first. If you're going to use the last name title system in the references, you should probably go with last name first in the printed sources, to make things easier. You just need to pick one way and stick with it.
 * Done Kyriakos (talk) 22:05, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Nope, not done. Some in the References section are "Richard Gabriel" others are "Gabriel". Same for all the references/footnotes. Some just use the last name, some use the full name. It doesn't matter which way you go, but it should be consistent. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:40, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I didn't notice those. I'll fix them. Kyriakos (talk) 21:38, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I fixed them myself. Something odd is up with your using  in the middle of the tags, which wasn't letting them show up when I used my script to attempt to edit just the refs. Anyway, it's fixed. All done! Ealdgyth - Talk 12:57, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Current ref 5 Rossabi All the Khan's Horses is lacking a publisher.
 * Done. Publisher is Columbia University. Kyriakos (talk) 22:05, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Cool, thanks for doing it. Kyriakos (talk) 21:16, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There are two sources in the printed sources section that aren't listed in the references, those should go in a further reading section if they really have not been used as references.
 * Done. Kyriakos (talk) 22:05, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Otherwise sources look good, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:47, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Comments
 * "30,000[2]-80,000[3][4][5]" needs an en dash per WP:DASH.
 * Done &mdash;paranomia happy harry's high club 20:29, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * A few of the references are placed incorrectly, such as "his ambassadors[7], the", which should be "his ambassadors,[7] the", per WP:FOOTNOTE.
 * Done &mdash;paranomia happy harry's high club 20:29, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * "Printed sources" should have authors as "Last name, first name" and then sort by last name.
 * Done. Kyriakos (talk) 22:05, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Gary King ( talk ) 15:52, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Support. I supported this article for A-class  and believe it meets the FA criteria.  Excellent work. Cla68 (talk) 05:31, 25 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Support, looks FA-class to me. -- Bogdan що? 13:48, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose: it needs wikification. There are numerous terms, locations, names, etc. than need linking, while others are linked several times. The articles relies too heavily on two sources (Richard Gabrieland Leo de Hartog) - I fully understand how obscure the topic is and how hard it is to obtain proper citations. Inline citations are sparse (for example, the entire section ==The battle== has only four citations). The article needs some copy-editing (just an example: How large each princes contingent was, is usually not known.) The map with routes of expedition should really be moved up from the aftermath section (probably to prelude). historian Robert Marshall is probably correct in describing - who judged him to be "probably correct"? despite rather fanciful efforts by Gabriel - again, whose opinion? Introduction is too detailed as a summary of the article. It should talk less about what turns the Mongols took and what princes they killed and describe bigger picture items like impact on Kievan Rus', Mongol Empire, future invasions, etc. Leave the details to the body of the article. must have had a devastating impact on Kievan Rus' government and society - any details? In the aftermath there is information only about Mongols, pretty much nothing on Kievan Rus' or other affected states. Just a suggestion, but since pretty much nothing is known about the battle itself and the entire article describes the three-year raid, wouldn't it be better to re-focus the article on that raid instead of one battle? Renata (talk) 23:46, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment. Sorry my version of the article was undone. The article as it stands now has many more sources. I'll work on the lead and pay more attention to watch you said. Kyriakos (talk) 09:45, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Notes, wikification, and some MoS attention needed. Also, I want to call attention to WP:ACCESSIBILITY in terms of the order of items in the lead.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 03:26, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment. I've wikified the article as much as possible. Kyriakos (talk) 23:20, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I question a number of the sources and most of the troop figures found in this article, and thus, it's overall quality. I question whether all the information on the lead up to the battle should be in this article - it should be somewhere, probably in an article on the campaign itself. But more importantly, the figures as to the size of armies and their movements prior to, during, and after the battle are simply not at all based on any reality. The medieval sources (and there are very few) say almost nothing of the size of armies and where they were on the battlefield, so how can Gabriel and others know this? In looking at Gabriel and others, they often cite previous authors who themselves do not cite where they got the information, or they repeat information without being at all critical of its accuracy. As to Munro, he is the (fiction) writer known as Saki; he was not a historian, and I am not sure his work on the Russian empire should be considered a worthwhile historic source or if Munro meant it to be. John Fennell, the late historian of Rus and Russian history at Oxford Univeristy, took the figures to task in his book "the Crisis of Medieval Russia" back in 1983, which I put in the article, but which has since been removed. The "Russian Primary Chronicle" and the "Chronicle of Novgorod", both contemporary to the time of the battle, are very limited in what they say of the battle. The "Chronicle of Novgorod" names fifteen princes, of which six were killed, and the "Russian Primary Chronicle" gives the figure of 10,000 Russians at the battle. Since we don't even know exactly where the battle took place, we can't say where particular units or particular princes were on the battlefield or the precise course of battle, so I'm not sure how Gabriel and others, or the editors of this entry, come up with that information. When I have tried to make corrections to this effect in the article, they have, again, been deleted or otherwise taken out. That seems to me to be shoddy history - ignoring the information that doesn't suit your need. If this is supposed to be an article about what really happened at the Battle of Kalka River, it seems to me that it does a poor job of this. --Mcpaul1998 (talk) 12:04, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Notes on the exactness of the figures and course of events, which are not known*

Comments on images
 * Image:PremongolEurasia.png - Maps are supposed to indicate the sources for their information on the image description pages. Ideally, they are supposed to be in SVG format as well.


 * Image:Dnieper Nasa 2004-05-06.jpg - The source link is imprecise - it just takes one to an informational page about NASA images.


 * Image:Gengis Khan empire-fr.svg - Maps are supposed to indicate the sources for their information on the image description pages. Awadewit (talk) 16:02, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I will be on vacation from now until 20 July, during which I will have intermittent internet access. I will revisit this nom as often as I can. Awadewit (talk) 00:02, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose—Requirement for a professional standard of formatting: overlinked.
 * Why are common words such as "coalition", "camp" and "surrendered" linked? Needs an audit thoughout. Let your high-value links breathe. This is a MOS breach—please see MOSLINK and CONTEXT.
 * Done. I unlinked them. Kyriakos (talk) 22:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
 * What does "The Rus' army combined and routed the Mongol rearguard left to observe the Rus'." mean?
 * Done. I rephrased it. Kyriakos (talk) 22:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
 * ToC jammed onto the left on my monitor.
 * "Meanwhile" has that informal ring about it. I'd just remove it, or replace with "At the same time,". There are more than one of them.
 * Done. I changed all the meanwhiles. Kyriakos (talk) 22:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
 * "Today the Mongols ..."—why the italics in the second part of this quotation? See MOS.
 * Done. I found the mistake that I had made. Kyriakos (talk) 22:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Paragraph control: "Initial moves" starts with a grey whooper, then two little stubs. The lengths shouldn't be too different. TONY   (talk)  14:58, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. I fixed the sizes. Kyriakos (talk) 22:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Like Mcpaul1998, I am concerned about the accuracy of the article, and the use of sources. For example, we are told "This battle was a significant defeat, given that many of the Rus principalities lost much of their armies, with the notable exception of Vladimir-Suzdal". However, Fennell (p. 68) concludes: "To judge from all the available sources, the impact of the first Tatar invasion on the Russians appears to have been remarkably small". We are told here that Yuri Vsevolodovich "promised support", but Fennell expresses doubts as to Yuri's having done any such thing and one of the primary sources says that Yuri was not present at the council of war in Kiev (p. 67). If we accept Fennell's arguments on the scale of events (pp. 66–68), any secondary source reproducing the sorts of figures appearing in this article must be somewhat suspect. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:32, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

According to several of the books that I have read on the battle, Yuri of Vladimir-Suzdal promised support but was deliberately slow in sending it so as to strengthen his position after all the other Prince's armies were defeated. Kyriakos (talk) 22:55, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.